If it ain't broke, don't fix it

This is the perfect statement for this situation—YouTube had a perfectly fine method for adding videos to the queue when casting or connected to the TV app, then just took it away with no reason. While the UI could have used some updating, sure, the UX was sensible and obvious. As someone who watched YouTube daily and often is casting to the TV when I am home, the alteration of this feature makes no sense and makes my queue-building experience more cumbersome than it needs to be 😢

How it used to work

When casting or using the mobile app as a remote, you would select your first video to watch and you were met with a pop-up that provided two options: play video or add to queue. This was great for those times you wanted to take a few minutes to build up your video queue before starting to watch! That same pop-up showed up for any video you clicked on after the first—choosing "play video" would stop the current video and move the selected video up to the top of the queue and start playing it. Adding it to queue would do, well, exactly that.

This worked perfectly well, making for an intuitive experience. So of course they had to get rid of it 🙄

above image is a section from this article on Groovy Post.

What happened to it?

I understand wanting to update the UI to give the feature a more contemporary look and feel, but to just get rid of it completely? It's a bit mind-boggling to be honest. Now when I'm trying to add a video to the queue, it automatically starts playing as soon as I tap it—the pop-up is gone! I don't get the choice of playing it or adding it, it just starts playing the selection…

The number of times I mess up my queue in a week is… well let's just say it happens fairly often. Muscle memory hasn't quite kicked in yet to save me from cancelling out the house tour video I was watching to start a camera gear review—I didn't even get to see how big the bath tub is!

What do we do now?

There is technically a secondary way to add a video to queue—it's hidden behind the 3-dot menu on each video's panel. You selected the menu and the option is there nestled in with a few other functions. This is not well thought out I'm afraid. Aiming for that little menu icon for each and every video I want to add? That is a recipe for disaster. Even when I remember to reach for it, there is a good chance that I won't tap within the hit-box and accidentally tap on the video itself—we know what happens then. So yeah, the option is there but it's not great, and it certainly is not a replacement for what they decided to remove.

Will it ever come back?

I sure hope it does! If you too are affected by this, the best thing to do is to submit feedback, whether through YouTube directly or over on social media is up to you. The more of us affected they know about, the better. I don't understand why they got rid of such a basic and essential feature, and I'm not sure they know why either. I've also typed out the word queue so many times that it now looks weird and has lost its meaning. Ah well. Fingers crossed we get it back sooner than later.

Queue. Queue. Queue. Yeah… it's so weird now lol